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The Bronze Age: 7 Ways to Add Drama with Purple-Brown Plants
At the Chelsea Flower Show last month one plant kept popping up again and again, dotted through show gardens and on nursery stands and displays. Atriplex hortensis—or orache—is an edible salad crop that is increasingly being grown in borders, too, and at Chelsea it was used as a bold vertical accent amidst summer perennials. But its most distinguishing characteristic may be its deep purple and bronze foliage, which can provide a foil to softer pastel flowers and green leaves—and bring drama to each space.
Dark leaved plants add vital depth and interest to planting schemes and can be deployed in myriad ways. Here are seven ideas for using them to dazzling effect.
Photography by Clare Coulson, unless otherwise noted.
1. Contrast with pastels.
Above: Atriplex hortensis var. rubra was one of many star plants on Sarah Price’s gold medal winning Nurture Landscapes garden at the Chelsea Flower Show; planted here with irises, fennel, salvia and silver leafed perennials. For more on the garden, see Chelsea Flower Show 2023: Sarah Price Uses a Painterly Palette in Her Dreamscape of a Garden Web Story.
2. Cover bare ground.
Above: There’s possibly no finer bronze foliage than that of shade-loving epimedium which has delicate heart shaped leaves surrounding exquisitely pretty flowers. The spreading plant makes excellent ground cover. Cut the evergreen foliage back in spring to ensure a fresh mound of foliage.
3. Clip a structural dome.
Above: Many dark colored shrubs lend themselves to being clipped into neat topiary shapes. Pittosporum tenufolium ‘Tom Thumb’ is perfect for mild areas and has gorgeous glossy purple evergreen leaves while fast growing (and hardier) copper beech has larger silky leaves that emerge bronze before going darker over summer.
4. Deploy statement leaves.
Above: Rodgersia ‘Bronze Peacock’ has large palmate leaves that, as the name suggests, are a stunning color as they emerge before turning green in summer, when tall pink flowers emerge. Perfectly for dappled shade where the light can make the most of its exquisite foliage.
5. Paint a border with heucheras.
Above: Perfect for a slightly shady spot, heucheras come in hundreds of painterly shades including coppery tints through to bronze and deepest purple including ‘Obsidian’ and ‘Plum Pudding’; ‘Bronze Beauty’ has delicious palmate foliage with tall cream flowers in late summer.
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